A day with Hackaday

The year 2015 saw my project BeagleLogic as a Best Product finalist in the 2015 Hackaday Prize, and my other project Smarter Power Pack as a semifinalist in the main event. I also got to attend the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit at Sunnyvale, CA (thanks to BeagleBoard.org) in November 2015 where I met many interesting people and had a great time.

Just the next weekend was Hackaday’s first hardware conference – the Hackaday SuperConference – which would later go on to be a grand success. I however knew that I couldn’t stretch my 8000-mile trip to the weekend because my university end-term examinations began next week and I had to leave on the Thursday before, the 12th of November. I let Sophi (of Hackaday) know and they invited me for lunch with them Thursday afternoon at the Supplyframe office at San Francisco.

Thursday morning, I boarded the Caltrain to San Francisco, and then roughly a 10-minute walk from the station to the office. This is how my entry was announced at the “Hackaday SuperConference” group chat channel at Hackaday.io :

The office at that time was packed and brimming with activity as the entire Hackaday crew had gathered and working together towards the Superconference. I sat on a table beside [Aleksandar Bradic] (CTO, Supplyframe) and [Chris Gammell] (of AmpHour podcasts and Contextual Electronics). Behind me were [Rich] and [Sophi] working on a video-shoot for the Hackaday Omnibus 2015 release (yes, I saw a part of the shoot that day). Here is a link to the released video on Vimeo.

Thanks to [Jasmine], I did not miss the SuperCon badge and T-Shirt. As a proofreader for the Hackaday Omnibus 2015, I received my copy as well.

Now there’s an interesting backstory of the badge here that I think I can share with you: As I put on the lanyard onto the badge, they realized that the drill hole for putting the lanyard on the badges was a tight fit and it would be cumbersome to remove and re-attach the badge without scratching the solder mask on top. The solution? A bunch of keyring rings which would then go on between the badge and the lanyard – like here.

I got to play with the new NVIDIA Jetson TX1 for a while, a test unit of which had just arrived at Hackaday ([Brian] would later publish a hands-on with it, which can be read here). I saw [Brian] and [Mike] typing on what would be the posts that would later go on to the Hackaday blog, and also the HaD tip line, in the short time I was there.

Once [Sophi] and [Rich] were done with a round of shooting for the Omnibus video, we proceeded for lunch to a nearby restaurant. The food was great. The lunch time conversations, even more great.

After lunch we walked back to the Supplyframe office and I bid goodbye to the entire team, and boarded my flight back to India later that night. I had got to see the team behind Hackaday up really close, and my respect for them has only grown since. They are doing a great job with their blog, the Hackaday.io community and the SuperConference which I really missed being a part of this year. A big shout out to them, and also to [Sophi] for making an exception while you all were so busy preparing for the SuperCon so that I could get to be there, and interact with you all. Thanks for having me there! Looking forward to meeting you all again.

Wishing all readers a very Happy New Year 2016 from The Embedded Kitchen.